Vision is the portal of human perception that allows the most rapid transfer of information, and our brains support many sophisticated ways of processing visual input. Yet basic physical and biological constraints have required important compromises. Aspects and embodiments disclosed herein work around those compromises, and provide for access to information regarding electromagnetic radiation in frequency ranges that the unaided human eye is incapable of perceiving.
Normal human color vision is trichromatic. In more detail, it is based upon taking three weighted samples of intensities across the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. On the other hand, physics teaches us that the electromagnetic spectrum is continuous, and so that there is a continuum of possible intensities. Moreover, the physical spectrum extends beyond the visible, for example, to infrared and ultraviolet to which unaided human eyes are essentially insensitive. Thus there is a great deal of extra information in the signals arriving at our retina, to which we are insensitive. It could be of great value, in many applications, to make that information accessible.